


Belay

by bonehandledknife (ladywinter), Primarybufferpanel (ArwenLune)



Series: The Mountains Are The Same [5]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gap Filler, Gen, Podfic Available, The Vuvalini - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 20:47:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4451810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladywinter/pseuds/bonehandledknife, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/Primarybufferpanel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Belay: To protect a roped climber from falling</p><p>  <i>(at least this day no new ghosts will chase him)</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Belay

 

Max unpacked the bike the Vuvalini gave him with quick motions and quicker decisions of whether to keep or discard. They were loading up the War Rig for the run back to the Citadel and they needed to consider weight and speed and what they’d be able to carry if they had to move fast. The work was slow, because there were many bags, many more than he’d had to deal with in very many days, the items almost claustrophobic as they’d been pressed into his hands. But perhaps no more claustrophobic than the endless Plains of Silence. The salt choked the air even now that they were at its border instead of in its midst, and he was glad to be free of it. There was nothing but a slow death in that direction.

 

(at least this day no new ghosts will chase him)

 

He looked over at Furiosa, who was disassembling the packs while sitting on one of the low-slung bike trailers. She’d paused, staring at the War Rig; Nux was standing by it, and offered Cheedo a hand up into it. She placed her fingers in his palm like some half-remembered story-girl, noble, and he provided support as she ascended. When the War Boy turned to offer his hand to Toast, she only scrambled up the Rig herself. Nux smiled in a friendly way in response and simply started handing up the bags that they couldn’t carry and still climb with.

 

“Hmm,” Max grunted, “Didn’t expect to see that.” A War Boy so gentle.

 

Furiosa turned to him, and measured him quietly. He held still for her, and arched an eyebrow, and she shook her head in reply, face turning to look at the sand.

 

Quietly, “They’re different, outside of war.”

 

Max made a rising little noise that was one part question and three parts disbelief. _Were they ever free of war?_

 

“Sometimes within war,” she conceded with a little tiredness, “if you're on their side.” Her hands worked, opening the packs with a bit more force.

 

Max had stopped moving, instinctively still, listening to the angry rustle of cloth and leather. He would not be surprised if something ripped.

 

Furiosa caught herself. Stilled with his stillness, and stopped moving too. Her hands fell to her lap, then she reached up with a brisk movement and spun the knob on her shoulderpiece all the way to a hard stop.

 

She seemed just the slightest bit smaller and it made Max feel awkward standing. He brought over the pack of dried food he’d been working on to her trailer and squatted, rummaging through the packs she’d just opened to combine similar items. He glanced briefly up at her, and then looked back down, letting her collect her thoughts.

 

“My crew would have died for me,” Furiosa finally admitted, “when we were on the same side.” She reached out and joined Max in his task. “They knew they would be awaited. They would have found it… chrome.”

 

From anyone else the words would have sounded like an excuse, from Furiosa they sounded like regret, like distaste. Max looked up and met her gaze and in her eyes her ghosts screamed, too, _you let us die_

 

He knew, as her eyes drifted itself back into middle-distance that she, too, had family who asked her, _where are you?_

 

Neither of them really knew how to answer because they knew the real question was, **_who_** _are you?_  

 

Max has become a part of the waste, one who destroys and one who finds a means to survive and walk away, even if it means someone else doesn’t. He remembers a handsaw, guzzoline, a deadline, and knows that the one who bleeds isn’t even necessarily the one who’d made him bleed first. Knows that somewhere in him, he doesn’t really mind. He remembers the old man he’d left at the side of the road, sunken eyed and frail, the children he’d let fend for themselves in a taped together city with taped together hope, the little dark haired Glory who’d fell because the violence splashed onto her and Max’s never enough to halt it or curb it or direct it meaningfully because at one point some part of him started screaming— and hasn’t stopped except for choking on it. Sometimes he comes back to himself, bloodied, and can barely remember how, or why, or words, or reason.

 

Whenever he looks at Furiosa, her eyes look like they know what that’s like, her mouth set like determined calm, her shoulders held like they wait for the violence, and Max knows what that looks like because his shoulders are the same. The ‘who’ that their ghosts keep asking for keeps drifting further and further away from those that would care to ask.

 

_Did it matter?_

 

For once Max paused the thought. He closed the drawstring to his bag. Looked up at the laughter and the cheerful singing of the women, recounting old happiness in ballads as they repacked their bikes for speed and for war. Capable was scrambling around the lookouts with two of the Vuvalini, and Cheedo and Toast were pulling things Nux handed up into the cab. The Dag was ferrying items to and fro the various bikes; armfuls of mismatched items, seeds and anti-seeds, boltcutters and chains. The Valkyrie was with two others, checking their weapons, occasionally belting out the chorus of the song or an especially vibrant line.

 

_Yes, it mattered._

 

Her ghosts were not as ephemeral as his; her family lived on in these women. They would still care to ask. He knew that they were in for a hard bloody day, but at least there was some chance in that direction, compared to endless dryness in the salt. A single hard day, versus one hundred and sixty hard days of a long slow death.

 

He would only need to ferry them to the Citadel, Max thought. The old and the new, Many Mothers with their seeds and the girls who knew how to temper war. And Furiosa, whose crew had died for her, yes, she would know how to temper war as well.

 

Max turned to look at Furiosa but she had followed his gaze and was looking at the women too. And while her expression was resigned, her eyes were lighter than he’d yet seen.

 

He thought they could be lighter still.

 

Max found that he would like to help get her there. And thought maybe his ghosts would stop urging him to get back to her if he can see her off; strong, and light, and safe.

 

* * *

 

She’s deathly still in his arms and his mind is a greek chorus of _no_. She needs to breathe so he gives her a knife, needs blood so he gives her that too, needs something to hold to, to keep her awake.

 

 _Max_ , he tells her.

 

In this new world, names are totems, are sacred, are strength.

 

He would like to give her what strength he has. It’s never enough, but he gives it, would have kept giving until long after the old Vuvalini warrior tells him he can't give more and detaches despite his protest the red line that goes from him to her.

 

He wants to tell her: _no, not yet. Her eyes aren’t open_. But he turns too quickly and fumbles against the car seat and they arrange his limbs despite himself and drape him with something soft. He blinks, and the sun has moved, the horizon’s changed.

 

He blinks again and Furiosa leans against his side, breathing lightly but smooth, and one of the girls - Cheedo, he thinks - is nudging at his hand with a piece of jerky.

 

He accepts it.

 

* * *

 

Max glances down at the Wretched cheering for the wives and for Furiosa. He glances up at the various ports and docks of the Citadel and the white-bodied War Pups are overwhelming in numbers compared to their elders, children who were cheering on the Walking Men on their giant treadmills. When he looks over at the water, he sees figures up top controlling the stream, lush. None of this was his doing, directly, and Max thinks that Furiosa will be fine with all this support behind her. There’s nothing else he can give her. Each of the wives around her are standing tall, and when Max slides backwards they shift to brace her and help keep her upright.

 

He hangs off the edge of the lift, and drops.

 

He barely misses a sun-baked man, and crouches below the tide of people for a moment, getting his bearings.

 

_over here Max!_

 

Glory calls, and Max thinks, _Wait_.

 

He surges out of the humanity and looks up and when Furiosa finds him with her eyes, he knows what he was waiting for. She looks strong and weightless, like she’s stopped running.

 

 _That’s good,_ Max thinks, nodding.

 

She nods back as if agreeing, and acknowledging, and letting him go.

 

So Max leaves and follows Glory as she darts through the dunes. Towards where the Rig had fought the spiked cars, he realizes, and thinks that there’s probably some parts he’d be able to find there, and cobble together something to keep moving.

  
(he knows how to survive, and how to walk away.)

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like I'm living the dream with this cowriting project. The story keeps moving when I'm not looking! From here on out, every solo project will have that crushing disappointment of opening a file and discovering the story is still where I left it. (Primarybufferpanel)  
> I don't think you understand where I'm at with my amazement tho. Like, you mentioned that we're apparently drift compatible writers but I don't think you realize how rare it is that I find someone who has, somehow, inspiration at the points where I'm most stuck? (bonehandledknife)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] Belay](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8221508) by [Owlship](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlship/pseuds/Owlship)




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